Although designed for comfort, a hospital bed can be a very uncomfortable place to be. Simple tasks, such as adjusting the bed, turning on a light or changing the channel on the TV, can become major frustrations for the patient and time wasters for the nursing staff if the patient must constantly call for assistance. It is well known that a patient's recovery can be improved dramatically when unnecessary stress and frustration is eliminated. It is also well known that as patients become able to exercise independent control over their own immediate environment, their confidence is restored, and their condition begins to improve more rapidly.
It is known in the art to provide a motorized hospital bed with an on board computer having control means for interfacing with an overhead bed light, nurse call and a TV or radio. These known hospital beds typically include a push-button control panel disposed along one or both sides of the bed which provides most patients with convenient access to these manually controllable functions. However, sometimes the patient has a medical condition, such as, for example, when a patient has suffered stroke, whereby the patient is not able to operate the hand access controls on the bed. For this situation, it is desirable that the room environment control functions be operable by the patient's spoken command.
Voice recognition environmental control units having speech synthesis capability are also known in the art. An example voice recognition environmental control unit is The Simplicity.TM. Series Five available through Quartet Technology, Inc., of Tyngsboro, MA. The Series Five is directed to home use and includes a specially constructed main control unit which includes conventional phone jacks and an RS-232, microphone and DB25 connector ports. The control unit includes an infrared transmitter and uses known and commercially available infrared operable control modules for remote operation of lights and other appliances through voice command. The special and limited use construction of the main control unit results in an expensive system on the order of $5,000 or more, and accordingly is cost prohibitive to many users.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,838,275, issued to Lee, teaches to provide a subscriber based medical surveillance system whereby a subscriber patient lies or sits on specially adapted furniture, such as a bed or chair, which includes sensors for monitoring a plurality of health parameters. The system includes an elaborate network wherein a subscriber patient's health information is transmitted to, an received by, a third party observer. Responsive to this health information, the observer conducts routine diagnostic sessions and, in case of emergency, facilitates the contact of the appropriate emergency authorities. The system includes two-way voice communication between the patient subscriber and the observer service.
The medical surveillance system of Lee is directed primarily for home use by an ambulatory patient who is otherwise capable of controlling his or her own room environment independent of the surveillance system. This system suffers the disadvantages of being difficult and expensive to implement, especially in view of the amount of specialized equipment that must be purchased or leased by the patient. Also, additional expenses are incurred through the periodic service fees associated with the third party observer and diagnostic service.
While, present technology exists for providing a computer with a voice system for operation of application programs and system functions through spoken commands, prior art attempts to combine voice command capability to existing motorized hospital beds have yet to prove commercially successful.
Accordingly, there is a definite need in the art for a room environment control operator system which is operable by a bed-restricted patient to control, by voice commands, the traditional hospital bed functions, including the up/down positions of the head and leg portions of the bed, the nurse call, the TV and/or radio and room or bed light. It is also desirable that the voice-actuated system include a telephone interface, thus permitting a patient to receive calls or dial out to call emergency numbers or numbers of loved ones. There is also a need for such a system which is low cost and can be easily implemented using readily available components.